As means of communication improve, users of communication devices have an increased ability to consume and disseminate information, and to interact over the network through the sharing of information. This disclosure relates generally to improved means of facilitating commercial exchanges of media objects among interconnected users over the network.
Modern communication networks are typically hierarchical transmission networks with multiple layers of transmission protocols. A transmission network is a system that allows two or more transceivers to exchange data, whereas a transmission protocol is a sequence of standard interactive steps that facilitate the exchange. Typically, the lowest level protocols are more concretely tied to the interaction of physical circuitry, whereas higher levels of protocols are more abstract to facilitate higher level processing at an algorithmic level. For example, in the vernacular “the web,” also known as “the Internet,” has become shorthand for a multi-layer computer communications system, which combines higher level protocols for access, mid-level protocols, such as a means of locating resources available on the network through a system of uniform resource locaters (URLs), and low-level hardware protocols which control the exchange of large, uneven blocks of data by breaking them into smaller, standardized packets. Users seek improved means to gather, transfer, and share multimedia information with other users, without the burden of managing lower-level protocols or learning new programming languages.
The network user perceives information conveyed through various forms of media objects, including text, icons, voice, audio recordings, pictures, animations, videos, interactive widgets, and other audiovisual information. Descriptions of one or more forms of media objects may be combined in a data object, which the consumer accesses over the network. The data object may contain additional “metadata” information which is not typically observed by the consumer, but may instead define parameters useful in conveying information related to the object, such as user identifiers, data locaters, data types, or data interpretation resources, as described below. Metadata may combine one of more specialized categories of metadata, such as a “meta identifier”, a “meta keyword”, a “meta URL”, and so on.
Users communicating over a network typically use a physical device, such as a telephone, a text messenger, a cell phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a networked music/video player, a personal computer, or a public terminal, to interconnect with other users on the network. The shared information may be conveyed through various forms of media, including text, voice and audio recordings, pictures, animations and movie videos. Network users are able to perform social functions which are analogous to their real world counter-parts, such as to send and receive mail, to chat interactively, or to publish original works or compositions of other works, all in electronic form over the network. A network user utilizes a number of application programs to create or consume content on the network. Example application programs typically include a “media object player” and a “browser”.
A browser is an application program that is generally intended to display “web pages.” A web page is typically a two-dimensional image appearing as an individual page of information including one or more types of contained media objects. Multimedia content on the network appears in a virtual book format, which typically is displayed as an individually framed “web page” along with means for navigating to other related web pages. A web page may also be associated with consumer perceived audio output. Data for web pages is often described in a format known as a Document Object Model (DOM).
The multimedia content may be directly perceived on the web page or may be indirectly accessible. Content on the page may be directly perceived by including displayed images, videos, or a media object player rendered within the image of the page. Examples of indirect access include access to an audio recording through background music, access through an auxiliary page or pop-up window, access through an auxiliary program such as Microsoft's Windows Media Player®, or access provided through a link to another page. Many web pages incorporate one or more “hot links.” The hot link enables a consumer to access another web page or another application by pointing to and clicking on the hot link using a computer input pointing device such as a mouse. Consumers typically have the ability to reject the web page or additional media offering(s) through controls in the browser user interface, such as by clicking on a “close box” using the mouse to remove or “close” a displayed window image.
A web page may include one or more HTML elements informally referred to informally as a “tag”. More formally and syntactically, HTML elements are constructed with a plurality of metadata including a “start tag,” zero or more attributes and their associated values, some amount of content, and an “end tag.” Various HTML elements are pre-defined. For example, a media object consisting of an image may be described by the HTML image tag syntax,
<img src=“http://www.myaol.com/images/beagle.jpg” alt=“beagle, dog, hound”/>
In this example, the start tag “<img” denotes the beginning of an HTML element consisting of an image. The “src” attribute denotes the source or location of the image on the network, i.e. the network address of the image file associated with the URL, “http://www.myaol.com/images/beagle.jpg.” Note that the local storage of data for the web page does not need to include the image file itself, but may instead include a reference to a remote file. The “alt” attribute provides alternative text in case the image cannot be displayed, which in this case is: “beagle, dog, hound.” Finally, the end tag “/>” denotes the end of the HTML element. Informally, common usage in the art refers to such an example as an image embedded via an HTML tag.
A network user may also become a composer to create new web pages. The DOM for a web page is typically stored in a data file using a common programming language, such as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). The composer may compose the web page directly by creating a description in the common programming language, or may compose the web page indirectly using an application program to combine text descriptions and other media into a page description in HTML or another suitable language. A composer may further combine one or more web pages to create a “website.” A website may be self-contained, in that it consists solely of web pages created for that site and a means for navigating among the contained web pages. More commonly, a website contains a combination of composer-generated content as well as links to other content or applications on the web. Typically, the composer may review a new web page or website composition on his computer using his browser.
The composer may also disseminate the new web page or website to other users on the network by publishing his page description(s) on a “web server”, where a web server is a server connected to the communications network that will provide published web pages in response to requests from authorized users on the network. To use the web server to publish a page, the composer typically registers with a service provider, such as Yahoo!, Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., to use a service called Yahoo! GEOCITIES™, Composers who wish to enhance a web page with media content other than text typically complete a cumbersome process of locating and incorporating the content. When the web page(s) are published, the composer and service provider may be exposed to legal liability for incorporating copyrighted or inappropriate content. Although the composer or service provider could potentially license the incorporated content, transaction costs may be too high for individual composers.
As mentioned previously, a consumer may also use an auxiliary program to perceive media objects, such as the Windows Media Player®, available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., the RealPlayer® from RealNetworks, Inc. of Seattle, Wash., or the QuickTime® player from Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. Each of these players is able to process a variety of data file formats describing media objects. Example data file formats include JPEG, TIFF, or PIC format data files for photographs, WAV, MP3, or AIFF format data files for audio recordings, and AVI, MPEG, or H.264 format data files for video recordings. The consumer typically locates and accesses a media object described in a suitable format for his or her auxiliary program. If the media object is not directly available in a suitable format, the consumer may convert the media object file format to a suitable format using conversion software, such as Harmony Technology® from RealNetworks, Inc.
A browser may also support one or more plug-ins. A plug-in operates within the context of an existing web browser. The plug-in is operative to functionally replace, augment, or modify the functionality of the browser, to enable one or more program steps to be performed in the browser environment. Plug-ins may also represent an alternative way for a consumer to access a stand-alone software application. For example, Yahoo! Instant Messenger© is available as a stand-alone client application program that allows two or more networked users to chat interactively over the network. The Instant Messenger client application is also available as a plug-in to run in a browser window.
A further feature of HTML tags is the ability to invoke remote programs. For example, an HTML tag embedding a digital video may invoke an external media object player, a browser plug-in, a web-based user application, or a web-based network service to decode and render the video. Further, HTML code tags may be nested to provide a plurality of application functions. A consumer accessing an HTML web page containing a reference to a digital video, for example, may activate HTML tags to invoke a local digital video player application as a browser plug-in, to invoke transmission of a request for a streaming digital video file to a media file server, and to receive the transmission, decode it, and render it on his computer.
When multimedia content for the network has been created, the creative work may be distributed by posting it on the network, using, for example, a web server or a content aggregation website. Various rights to the creative work may be licensed or assigned. For example, the creator of the work may retain a right of attribution and a degree of control over derivative works, while a distributor might have the right to a share of revenue from distribution of copies of the work. Further, a creative work may be made available for reuse by a third party. The third party may desire, for example, to republish the work, redistribute the work, attach advertising to the work, or incorporate the work in a derivative work.
A work is made available for republication by others through a variety of methods. The work may be marked as available by designating a license authorizing such secondary and tertiary use, such as a Creative Commons or other license. A work may also be syndicated using an RSS feed, the result of which may by embedded into a second site by a second user for viewing by a third user. RSS is a family of web feed formats for streaming media, including the Really Simple Syndication format (RSS 2.0), the RDF Site Summary format (RSS 1.0 and 0.90), and the Rich Site format (RSS 0.91). A work posted on a server website may also be searched for and found, and embedded in a second site through a URL reference to the server website. A work found by a search engine may also be cached in a search engine server, and presented as an excerpt along with links to the original work in a search result.
Network users spend a lot of time to navigate the network to search for multimedia content to exploit commercially. Potentially valuable content is developed daily on a massive scale by millions of content creators publishing on millions of websites. Unfortunately, there is no simple way to associate business terms with the content governing its commercial use on second sites, including rights and revenue generating methods that result in monetary or other benefit to the content creator or original distributor. There is a need to provide an infrastructure for web content commerce with the means to locate and access creative works, to facilitate content-related transactions, and render more of the value of the creative works at a speed and scale appropriate for the Internet.